Path to .500

Baseball players famously live in the moment. Baseball managers will, invariably, say that they take it, “One game at a time.” Fans, however, live in the past and obsess about the future. We take off a few minutes every now and then to watch a game and, with the players, live in the moment. Otherwise we cycle from ruminating over the past to speculating about tomorrow.

At the beginning of the year Durham Bulls fans were confidently looking forward to another Southern Division title. After all, that’s all we’ve known for a very long time. Sure, the roster didn’t look all that strong, but manager Charlie Montoyo and his crew of Neil Allen and Dave Myers could probably pull it off.

Here at WDBB we think a more modest re-look at the Bulls prospects is in order and suggest a more reasonable goal for the season. What about hitting a won-loss record of .500 by the 1st of September?

That is not the easy goal that it may appear to be. For the Bulls to hit .500 by the end of the season they have to win 52 of their remaining 95 games. In other words, they have to play .550 ball to hit .500 by September.

Pretty simple math (it’d have to be for me to get it). They have won 20 out of 49 games so far. They will play 144 games this season (unless there’s a rainout that can’t be rescheduled). They need to win 72 to break .500.

Here’s a chart showing how the Bulls have been doing in the won-loss column so far this year (the green line). I've added milestones to the .500 goal (the red diamonds) . I’ll update it from time to time as the year goes by.

Is this a reasonable goal for the 2012 Durham Bulls? Your comments gratefully appreciated.

Go Bulls!

click on chart for larger view